The two previous columns focused on recent proposals about the roles that prediction and intuition play in intelligent thought and behavior. This month’s column will focus on wisdom, one of the rewards we can get from an extended intellectually stimulating life.

Elkhonon Goldberg explores the underlying neurobiology of this intriguing concept in his fascinating informative new book, The Paradox of Wisdom: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older (2005). He draws on extensive cognitive neuroscience research and his own experience as a clinical neuropsychologist to propose an optimistic view of cognitive potential throughout life, and especially in the elderly.

Goldberg defines wisdom within the context of several interrelated concepts. Talent represents our potential ability to create genuinely novel content or performance, and genius represents its supreme manifestation. Similarly, competence represents our ability to relate new challenges to existing knowledge or skills, and wisdom represents its supreme manifestation.

Talent thus suggests promise, competence its realization. Talent and genius are commonly associated with youth, and competence and wisdom with maturity. Albert Einstein exhibited genius at age 26 when he proposed his theories of relativity — but wisdom in his sixties when he advised the US government on issues related to nuclear energy and war.

The wisdom paradox is that our potential for wisdom emerges as our body begins its inevitable decline. Aging is thus the price of wisdom, but wisdom itself is priceless to those who achieve it. Where then does wisdom set up housekeeping in an aging brain?